A Disaster of Enormous Magnitude

On Friday, 11 March, almost the whole of East Japan was attacked by a terrible quake, the greatest ever experienced here. It came three times, major ones alone, with innumerable minor ones in between and afterwards. The first was the severest shaking the houses for quite a long time. Very few buildings fell down as with each major quake a more strict standard for construction was being applied. In the Great Kobe Quake in 1995, the number of dead amounted to more than 6,000, mostly by the fallen buildings. Fires were also widely spread.
Talking of the Kobe Quake I still remember that a Korean reporter who visited the devastated area soon afterwards saying that no untoward thing was happening, implying that at the time of the historic Quake in 1923 in Tokyo, a wide area was put under the control of the army and with this as the background many Koreans who had come to Japan as workers were harrassed and even worse, together with many Japanese communists.
What was not to be seen at Kobe and is very much present this time is the repeated attacks of tsunami all along on the northeastern coast of Honshu(Japan's main island). Not only the magnitude of the quake, but also of this tsunami was something we have never imagined. We have for the first time realized that the tsunami's devastating capacity is very varied in the sense sometimes the first wave was more destructive than the following, but in other cases the second or third ones were taller and more far-reaching. The intervals between the waves were also different. The tsunami will account for much more of the casualties than the quake itself. At several places hundreds of people were swept away at a stroke.
Already more than fifty countries have offered to help, and we are grateful to them.
The Quake has left several problems to be seriously tackled. First, The whole transport network in the Metropolitan area came to a standstill. As the result millions of those who had come to Tokyo for a day's work had no means of going back. This is the end of the coldest season in Japan, and the outside temperature is still very low. Many able-bodied walked all the way home, and those who are fortunate were offered tea, or rest places by the local inhabitants along the way. My daughter was one of them who took 5 hours to cover 18.6km. She said she could do so as many others were also walking in the same way. She also saw a number of people purchasing cycles at a cycle shop, and walking shoes at a shoe shop. This may have been a good exercise on the eve of an weekend, but what about the weakness of the infrastructure?
Quite sereous is what happend to some of the nuclear power plants on the coast. It is too early to say anything definite on the point. All in all, this disaster has hit our economy very hard. But I hope this will be a time for the people to extend help to one another and rise together. Already we are watching those instances here and there.